Closed. The boat sank, the sharks won.

So says Nick Griffin, BNP leader, who was pelted with eggs and forced to abandon an impromptu press conference outside parliament. He goes on to say that the BNP:

won votes because it spoke openly about the problem of immigration

he argued that the "political elite" were responsible for making "the indigenous British majority… second class citizens in every possible sphere".

Now I don’t condone pelting anyone with eggs and I believe firmly in the freedom of any individual to speak their own political views, but this man’s hate and intolerance are somehow too much for that. The BNP are, reportedly, aiming to fund the resettlement of non-white immigrants living in the UK so they can return "home" and then the indigenous white majority will have enough jobs will we? Then life will be good again will it? Very familiar start to a familiar process there Mr Griffin.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then… they came for me… And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

So, first the non-white immigrants, then who? What if they don’t want to leave Mr Griffin? What then? Will you use force and deport them instead? How will you decide who gets to stay and who gets to leave? Will you use skin colour grading? The pencil in the hair test? DNA?

I am just plain disgusted that the UK managed, through political apathy and disinterest, to actually elect 2 of these fascists into power.I despair, I really do.

*cough, sneeze* I think I may be breaking out in rashers…

Now, I know that any form of flu can be dangerous for the young, elderly, immune compromised or those with respiratory problems. And I know that this swine flu is a nasty one. I also believe that one day some virus will adapt to resist all our medicines and will become the pandemic that we fear and millions will die, if not billions. But 28 cases does not make a pandemic.

So, compare that with 2 women dying every week, 104 every year. That’s this year, next year and the year after.  This is something that targets women and kills with terrifying regularity.

Not large enough numbers for you?

Try 100 women affected every day. That makes 36,500 every year. Now is that a pandemic yet? Are those numbers big enough to frighten you?

Yet these are not diseases as such, they’re not caused by a virus or bacteria. These cases do need medical help, and there is a long recovery if the woman survives. 

104 women every year are killed by their partner or ex-partner. The disease that is pandemic here is Domestic Violence.

100 women every day are victims of Sexual Violence and that’s just in the UK. Globally it must be so huge that I don’t even want to think about the numbers involves. Yet, where is the news? Where is the panic? Where is the outrage?

Oh, there isn’t any, no-one cares and life goes on as normal because it’s just women isn’t it……

Source: Shock, Horror - From the Foot of Witchy’s Stairs.

Last Friday, Delara Darabi was hanged in an Iranian jail with no warning and with total disregard for a 2 months stay of execution granted by the head of Iranian Judiciary.

BBC News.

early on Friday morning Delara Darabi made a desperate phone call to her parents, saying she could see the hangman’s noose.

"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she said, before a prison official took the phone away and said: "We are going to execute your daughter and there’s nothing you can do about it."

Her lawyer was not informed of the execution and neither was her family. 

"Amnesty International does not consider her trial to have been fair, as the courts later refused to consider new evidence which the lawyer said would have proved she could not have committed the murder,"

A young women’s life is ended for a crime she did not commit. She confessed to protect her boyfriend, funny how there’s no mention of him or him being tried and convicted for the murder.

 

I found this and it made me feel sick.

We all know that the male suicide bomber is promised 72 virgins in the gardens of paradise. What, then, does a female ‘martyr’ get in return for her suicide?

From the Mail Online. 

 

Women are controlled by men  -  their fathers and brothers initially, and then their husband and his brothers, who monitor and supervise every aspect of their lives. A woman is the possession of the men in her family.

Rape is the deadliest assault on this honour code. But few sympathise with the victim herself.

Whatever the circumstances, rape victims are almost always blamed for bringing shame to their family by somehow provoking her attackers.

Or simply by being somewhere away from the protection of the male members of the family.

In a marriage culture that prizes virginity, a rape victim will never find a husband and never recover from the sexual shame, it is a living death.

I’m speechless. But does this mean that a woman wearing her Abaya is to be feared? Should this incite us all to hate all Muslim people?

Not at all. 

The truth is suicide bombing is a cult. It twists parts of the Koran, parts of Arab culture and genuine political grievance into an easy but deadly myth.

It’s important to remember that this is a product of a mysoginistic society, a rape culture and that certain factions within that are manipulating the extreme line to produce this. It’s twisted and hateful.

Three year old raped.

Man charged with 64 sex offences, inc the rapes of girls under 14.

Two 13 year old girls raped. 

PE Teacher jailed for indecent child images.

Mothers of Albino’s attacked. 

25% of Armenian women are victims of domestic violence.

63 year old woman found suspiciously dead at home. 

Three women attacked on the same night. 

And on a more positive note…

Cavern Club listens to victims.

A brick bearing the name of disgraced glam rocker Gary Glitter was removed from Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club and replaced with a plaque

Mr Heckle said: "We actually thought it had been done nine years ago when Glitter was done and we removed all the merchandise.

"We spoke to a victim of paedophile crime and she said unequivocally ‘take it out’.

Mr Heckle revealed the name of disgraced record producer Jonathan King, who was also jailed for sex offences, was also removed.

Thank you. 

Asha Ibrahim Dhuhulow was raped by three men and when she reported it to the police she was arrested, accused of adultery, convicted and then sentenced to be stoned to death.

Asha’s Aunt had urged her to report the rape and had taken her to the police station. Two of the men were arrested and questioned and then she was asked to take Asha back in to the station.

the authorities clearly failed to notice her age, how mentally disturbed she was by her experience

The aunt says.  Asha was 13 years old, just 13.

"I was not even told that she was to be killed, I just heard it from people after it happened. "I don’t know what crime she committed other than being raped; and I was not even allowed to see her body,"

I’m speechless. 

In the news today…..

Killers try to clean up.

Two people accused of killing British student Meredith Kercher tried to clean up the victim’s blood, a lawyer claims.

The Leeds University student was spending a year abroad in the Umbrian town when she was killed. Her semi-naked body was found in her bedroom.

Prosecutors claim she died during a bungled sex game.

A funeral in Kabul.

[Gayle Williams’] sister Karen said her family forgave the killers and Gayle would have told them not to hold a grudge.

Reminds me of Agnes Humbert - another women working amongst conflict created by men but with so much generosity of spirit, such humanity, that she sees the individual rather than the uniform. 

Fritzl blames his mother - Born to rape

The Austrian father who allegedly imprisoned and abused his daughter for 24 years has said he was "born to rape", according to a leaked report.

The report by psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner says Joseph Fritzl’s mother humiliated him in childhood, creating his need to "possess a human being".

Hold on there - "Allegedly"???? I’m speechless. Allegedly? Oh and it’s all his mother’s fault? That’s it, blame a woman because it can’t possibly be his own responsibility. 

Concern grows for Esha Momeni.

Esha Momeni, who is from Los Angeles, was doing research into the status of women in Iran when she was arrested on 15 October.

According to her lawyer, Ms Momeni, 28, was pulled over for a traffic offence in the capital, Tehran.

She has been denied contact with any legal representation, allowed only one short phone call with her family and no reason for her continued detention has been given.

Then there are a series of assaults on women.

One in Blackpool.

What a bland little report. How diminishing is that? The whole tone is one of "Yeah, whatever, you’ll get over it." It’s so flat, have we really become so hardened to this that we don’t care any more?

One in Bradford.

Another loose report with no humanity.

Woman murdered in Scotland.

The remains of a woman were found in a burn near Dunlop, East Ayrshire. Police have not yet made an identification.

Officers said a post-mortem examination confirmed that the remains were female and that the death was now being treated as murder.

Police believe the body to be that of missing grandmother Anne Brown.

Then there’s yet another teacher convicted of viewing child porn. 

 ….4,000 images on his laptop of children aged as young as four being abused. Some were of the most severe level five….

I hope for a Sunday when I can go through the news and find something positive for the Sunday Shout.

Sally is a journalist…..

The security services planned the arrest of the journalist with painstaking care. They bugged her contacts and assembled an elite squad to take her down. On 8 May 2007, eight detectives swarmed into her home and seized her address book, mobile, laptops and bank statements. In a simultaneous raid, a second team searched her newspaper office - going through everything from filing cabinets to boxes of Cup-a-Soup by the office kettle.

Once in custody, detectives kept her isolated from her two teenage daughters and autistic son for 24 hours. Then they began the grilling.

It’s a tale from Stalin’s Russia? No? Mugabe’s Zimbabwe then?  Try again.

They let her go, but soon hauled her back in. Before her second interrogation, they left her shivering in a cell. Before her third, a woman officer put on rubber gloves and strip-searched her. After that, ‘I just lost my ability to think coherently,’ Sally Murrer said. ‘My brain went to cotton wool.’

Try Milton Keynes. Sally is a part time journalist who covers the WI and the occasional police story. It’s not a front line, outspoken newspaper and reading that article I am struggling to work out why, exactly, Sally was arrested in the first place, let alone what the charges are or why she needed such brutal treatment. I’m looking for a punchline, or April Fool, or a "Case thrown out for wasting court time." Or something. I don’t get it. What the hell is going on?

Two information centres which help victims of domestic violence are under threat because of a lack of funding, a charity has warned.

This is the centres at Colwyn and Aberconwy, but the location isn’t as important as the threat and the scale of this. 

Cheryl Dixon from Aberconwy’s Women’s Aid said the charity desperately needed more funds to pay an outreach worker to work with women and their children.

"The outreach worker is currently employed 10 hours a week, and that is not enough," Ms Dixon said.

Hang on, TEN hours? A week?  **speechless and spluttering in apoplectic rage**

"The refuge itself is paid for by the government, and that money is ring-fenced, although it does not go up with inflation,"

Why the hell not?  Inflation means costs go up, wage bills go up, utilities and services cost more, and this pot of cash isn’t linked to inflation???

Government reaction?

"Welsh Women’s Aid receives funding of over £1m per year from the domestic abuse budget."

Hey, Un-named Spokesman (yeah, man, not spokesperson…. *bangs head on desk*) You know something? £1 million won’t build us a big enough boat, it won’t really make enough of a difference. Funding rescue projects acknowledges there is a Domestic Violence problem and it does help a lot of women, but not everyone. But what is actually accomplished by even having a Domestic Abuse budget? Isn’t it saying that Domestic Violence is an accepted part of life but here’s a way to escape, maybe, if the funding supplies a space at the time you might need it.

Isn’t it just saying the water will keep on rising anyway and we can’t change it, but here are some sand bags? Is this not a "Take 2 aspirin and go away" approach to a serious issue?

Don’t get me wrong, the funding is needed and more than ever. But, perhaps a proper look at the root causes of domestic violence and the subjugation and dehumanisation of women is needed too? While we’re busy putting a little plaster on this gaping wound, we’re not making the changes desperately needed to stop the harm in the first place.

I’m back. Did you notice?

It’s been a bit fast and furious on here recently hasn’t it?

I had a burst of anger and it needed venting and now I’m just hoarse and tired of screaming into the wind when my words are stolen and twisted into pale echoes and no-one listens. No-one sees that the shadows in the water are the sharks, waiting out there for the unwary. No-one sees the No Swimming signs and that same wind blows them down, or lifts the sand to scour them free of my words. 

So I write in the sand and the tide comes in and washes it all away. I carve it deeper and still the tide and the wind take my power away and I’m left raw and hurting and wondering why we bother sometimes.

I need tea and cake, and a break from shark watching. Back when something catches my eye again, and at that point it’ll probably be fast and furious again. 

Watch the tideline….